First-year NOAA regional administrator John Bullard, who heads the regulation of fisheries from Maine through North Carolina from his perch in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration building in Gloucester’s Blackburn Industrial Park, says he doesn’t believe the Magnuson-Stevens Act allows the flexibility to extend the current Gulf of Maine cod limits, which cut 22 percent from fishermen’s allowable catch a year ago, for another year. Read more

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

We would like to publicly thank Congressman Seth Moulton for his support for fishing business in Gloucester. During the campaign, Congressman Moulton promised to advocate for sound policies Read More »

The announcement of a dedicated fisheries portfolio by the new Labour-led government has local fishing representatives hooked. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced this week the primary industries mega-ministry would Read More »

Abstract Winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes americanus) once supported robust commercial and recreational fisheries in the New York (USA) region, but since the 1990s populations have been in Read More »